Unstoppable (2 page)

Chapter Three

MRS. CONSTABLE BOUGHT CORNFLAKES
in plastic bins the size of garbage cans. She had an old coffee cup on a string that she used to serve out a full scoop to each of the kids every morning for breakfast. And, despite the fact that the farm produced fresh milk every day, Mrs. Constable filled her kids with the powdered milk she got for free from the county. Harrison hated that soapy-tasting pale blue liquid, but he was hungry enough that he'd eat it on his cereal without a word of complaint, and he supposed that the words Mrs. Constable sometimes muttered to herself were true.

“Don't need to waste good milk on kids like these.”

After breakfast, Mrs. Constable sent him back upstairs to wash behind his ears again. When he returned, she took her scissors out of the sewing drawer and told him to sit still on the kitchen stool so she could cut a straight line around his head just below the ears. Harrison did his best not to move, but still Mrs. Constable managed to nick an ear. She handed him a paper towel to stop the blood, and Harrison tried to whisk the tiny pieces of cut hair free from his neck, where they'd settled into the collar of his only white button-down dress shirt.

Mr. Constable appeared in his work clothes, ordered half a dozen fried eggs from his wife, and disappeared up the stairs to change into his brown suit. As Harrison cleaned up the mess from his haircut, he couldn't help sniffing the air as the eggs crackled in their puddles of butter. He knew if he was sly enough, he'd get to lick Mr. Constable's plate before it made its way into the sink for cleaning. Harrison laid his plans as he swept the kitchen floor. By working slow, he was able to delay long enough that he could fill Mr. Constable's coffee cup, then clean out the grinds from the pot, working slowly again, and offering to clean up the table.

“Don't you mess that shirt.” Mrs. Constable glared over the tops of her glasses, and Harrison wondered how just the thought of a dirty shirt could make someone so angry.

“I won't. You want me to clean the dishes too, ma'am?”

“The boy doesn't run from work, I'll say that.” Mrs. Constable sniffed with pleasure. Even though she had a dishwasher, Mrs. Constable complained about the electricity it used and preferred one of the kids do them by hand.

“If he weren't such a godforsaken liar, he'd almost be worth somethin'.” Mr. Constable jammed a piece of buttered toast into his mouth and chewed from side to side like one of his own cows.

Harrison made his move on the plate, removing it from the checkered tablecloth and hurrying to the sink, where he got in two quick licks before slipping it into the soapy water.

“Did you lick that plate?” Mrs. Constable's voice cut his ears like a razor.

“No, ma'am,” Harrison lied without pause.

“You better
not.
” Mrs. Constable removed the plate from the soap and smudged at it with her fingertip.

Harrison didn't ask why she cared whether the soapy water got the dribs of yolk instead of him. “No, ma'am.”

After the scrape of his chair, Mr. Constable stood and belched and pulled on his suit coat. “Time. I'll be back, Mrs.”

“You call him ‘Papa,' you hear?” Mrs. Constable dropped the plate into the water and scowled. “That's how you address Mr. Constable with the judge. You forget that and I'll have a bar of soap to feed you before afternoon chores.”

Harrison knew well the taste of laundry soap, and he had to admit that it was a good reminder to call Mr. Constable “Papa.” Harrison climbed into the bed of the pickup truck with Zip, the jug-headed yellow Lab. The truck jounced down the driveway, jarring Harrison's bones until the tires hummed on the smooth blacktop. The wind whisked through his shortened hair and Harrison flicked at the tiny brown pieces still clinging to his neck. Town held the county courthouse and several brick government buildings as well as the crumbling storefronts of the past hundred and fifty years. Once busy with trade from the railroad, they now sold nothing much more than yarn and used furniture. There were also two bars, a diner, and a nail shop, while the rest of the windows held
FOR SALE
signs behind their dusty glass.

The courthouse was a busy place, though. Just outside town a large modern prison housed the state's less dangerous criminals and offered up most of the good jobs for fifty miles around. Half the people in the courthouse seemed to be prisoners, and none of them was ever as glum as Harrison would be if he had to wear handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit. Mr. Constable's shoes clapped against the wood floor after they passed through a metal detector, and Harrison followed him to the back part of the courthouse, the new part with low ceilings, fake blond wood, and fluorescent tubes of light.

In a courtroom that looked more like a classroom to Harrison, the judge sat on a low platform behind his bench. A state flag drooped alongside the American flag, and a brass clock hung on the wall. Mr. Constable waved to the lawyer, and they sat down. Harrison scanned the room for his mother, but she wasn't to be seen. The judge scolded two teenage boys in orange jumpsuits before banging his gavel on the desk and watching them be ushered out by an armed guard. The boys looked scared, and the judge seemed satisfied with that.

Harrison tugged at the collar of his shirt, replaying all the things he'd done recently that might put him in the company of the imprisoned boys.

“Harrison Johnson.”

The bailiff looked out over the courtroom. Mr. Constable leaned close. “Don't forget—‘Papa.'”

Mr. Constable stood. Harrison did too, and followed his foster father to the front along with the lawyer, a greasy-looking man in a green suit with food stains on its sleeves.

“Melinda Johnson?” The bailiff craned his neck and Harrison turned his head, also scanning the room. “Ms. Johnson? Melinda Johnson?”

Mr. Constable spoke to the lawyer under his breath. “All this fuss and she's too drunk to show up.”

The lawyer nodded as if it was just another expected part of his job.

Harrison's heart sank.

“Is Melinda Johnson here, or counsel for Ms. Johnson?” The judge looked up over the top of his glasses and glared out across the room, clenching his teeth until the cords pulsed in his neck. “I see. Mr. Constable, will you approach the bench with your ward and counsel, please?”

The judge looked at Harrison with distaste before turning his attention to the lawyer. “Mr. Denny, do you have the paperwork for this boy's adoption?”

The lawyer fumbled with his briefcase, nodding and winking until he came up with a thick packet of papers. “Right here, your honor.”

“Then,” the judge said, examining the papers, “given the trouble Ms. Johnson has caused in all this and her apparent lack of responsibility—as well as respect for this court, I might add—all leads me to believe that the best course of action for this young . . . boy is to make him the legal and permanent son of Mr. and Mrs. Brad Constable.”

A look passed between Mr. Constable and the lawyer that Harrison didn't like. It was the look of two bank robbers who'd been invited into the vault. Harrison scanned the courtroom behind him again, feeling desperate and sensing that something very big was about to happen, something that would change the course of his life.

Something that couldn't be put right again.

Something very bad.

Chapter Four

MR. CONSTABLE TOOK AN
oath.

The teeth in his big head had too much room between them to form a complete smile, but it was the closest thing Harrison could remember to one. At the clerk's desk, the grown-ups signed papers while Harrison stood in his stiff white shirt, the hair itching him to no end. Panic choked him and he was unable to voice the protest he felt certain he should be making.

Mr. Constable nudged him before Harrison realized they were all staring at him and waiting for him to speak.

“Isn't that right, Son?” Mr. Constable asked.

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Constable's smile tightened and his eyes seemed to radiate heat. “You don't have to call me that, Son. Call me what you always call me.”

“Yes . . . Papa.”

For some unknown reason, that made the adults chuckle. The judge took the papers the lawyer handed to him, added his own signature, pronounced Harrison Johnson officially and legally to be Harrison Constable, and struck the desk with his mallet.

There was a ruckus at the back of the courtroom as someone forced open the doors with a shriek.

Chapter Five

HARRISON FELT HIS INSIDES
melt like butter in a hot pan.

His mother's dark frizzy hair shot out from her head in all directions. She wore a long raincoat and Harrison didn't know what else besides a dirty pair of fluffy pink slippers. He could see the red in her eyes from across the room and the heavy bags of exhaustion they carried beneath them.

Liquid pain pumped through his heart.

“That's my baby!” Harrison's mother screeched as the bailiff and a guard held her arms. “You can't do that to
my
baby!”

“Order in this court!” The judge pounded and glared, but it had no effect. “Order, I said, or you'll be in contempt!”

“Nooo!”

Tears welled up in Harrison's eyes. He felt like a split stick of firewood, half shamed, half aching to hold her. He started toward his mother, but Mr. Constable's big hand clamped down on the back of his neck so that the nerves tingled in his head.

“Bailiff, remove that woman and take her into custody for contempt. I'll not have it in my courtroom. I'll
not
have it.” The judge pounded a final time as they dragged her out. Then he cleared his throat, gave an accusing look to Mr. Constable, and asked the clerk for the next case.

Mr. Constable steered Harrison from the courtroom and all the way outside into the sunshine. A light breezed whispered through the trees, making the whole thing seem like a dream.

“Where's my mother?” Harrison asked.

“It's all right, Mud. You got a new mother now, Mrs. Constable. She's your mother by law.”

It was too much. Having a complete and legal family should provide comfort and nourishment for his soul, but it didn't. Harrison thought of a snake he'd discovered under some boards behind the barn, a small snake that had swallowed a whole rat. It sat like a lump, helpless and unable to move for weeks, until it could finally digest its prey. He was that snake.

Harrison's new status seemed to include sitting up front in the truck. He leaned his head against the glass without feeling the bumps and bangs, even as they climbed the hole-filled driveway to the farm.

Mr. Constable slowed down by the barn. “Chores.”

“What about school?” Harrison asked.

“You're excused for court.”

“But we're done.”

Mr. Constable reached across the seat and grabbed a handful of Harrison's trimmed hair at the back of his head, twisting it until his head thumped sideways against the dashboard. Mr. Constable moved his face close, also tilting it so they both looked at the world in the same knocked-over way. “You're done givin' me lip, you understand?”

Harrison nodded his head.

“Say it.”

“I understand.”

“I understand, sir.”

“I understand . . . sir.”

Mr. Constable turned him free. Harrison spilled from the truck, tripped, and fell to the ground.

“Chores.” Mr. Constable reached across the seat and yanked the door shut. Harrison sat dusting himself off as the truck pulled away toward the house.

He didn't know all the reasons why Mr. Constable wanted to adopt him, but he knew without a doubt that it would somehow end in the Constables getting more money from some charity or government program. He knew all the kids on the farm had started out as foster kids, only to be adopted by the Constables for some unspoken reason. While they didn't seem to mind, Harrison had never—and would never—stop thinking of Melinda Johnson as his one and only true mother. He would no more think of himself as Harrison Constable than he would as Mud Johnson, let alone Mud Constable.

Cyrus's switch whistled through the air and snapped against the barn door. “I heard ‘chores' mentioned. I'm busy with the vet. I need hay for the calves and I need it now.”

Without speaking, Harrison got to his feet and headed for the hay barn. He loaded several bales onto a wheelbarrow and bounced it across the barnyard to where the veal calves sat tied to the little plastic capsules that kept them out of the rain. With a pitchfork, he broke down the bales and scattered hay at the feet of each calf.

Finished, he put the pitchfork over his shoulder and headed for the noise in the milk barn. When he arrived, he saw Cyrus and the vet down in the parlor working on a cow whose head had been clamped down between some bars. The cow was having a calf, but something had gone wrong and the men shouted and hurried back and forth. Mr. Constable stood at the railing above, looking down with a stem of grass in his teeth. He turned and scowled at Harrison.

“I said ‘chores.'”

“I finished feeding the calves.” Harrison couldn't help but notice the cow's violent kick and the vet's quick movement to dodge it.

“No, you're lying again.”

Harrison's face felt hot. “I'm not lying. I finished.”

Mr. Constable pointed behind Harrison at the box stalls where they kept sick animals. “Them two sick calves ain't fed yet. Lying again. I said I won't have it, and I won't.”

Mr. Constable started to loosen his belt.

“No.” Harrison shook his head.

“No? I'll show you, no.”

“
You
lied!” Harrison surprised himself as the shout rose above the braying cow and the excited men, who both looked up from the parlor. “You said for me to call you ‘Papa.' That's a
lie
!”

Mr. Constable's belt whipped out at him—not the leather part, but the buckle itself, a treat only for the most special occasions. When it licked Harrison's forehead, blood spurted from his skin and one eye went dark.

Harrison wasn't exactly sure what happened after that. He knew he used the pitchfork, and he heard Mr. Constable scream in pain as two of the tines buried themselves in his leg. Why he flipped backward over the railing Harrison couldn't imagine, but he did. Harrison didn't blame himself for the cow. It was a wild cow, mad with pain from a bad birth, and Mr. Constable fell into it and the cow kicked him with all its might. The crack of Mr. Constable's skull was what Harrison remembered most, like a cobblestone split by a heavy sledgehammer.

And then the blood . . . and the screams . . . and the words. In the madness, at one point Mrs. Constable grabbed his ears and pulled his face close to hers so she could spit her hot words directly in his face.

“You
killed
him!”